Tuesday, December 6, 2011

philip k dick, psychedelia - book - 2000 - What if Our World is Their Heaven?: The Final Conversations of Philip K Dick

What if Our World is Their Heaven?: The Final Conversations of Philip K. DickGwen Lee and Doris Elaine Sauter (eds.)The Overlook Press2000204 pagesHi. Readers. I borrowed What if Our World is Their Heaven? from University of Toronto’s Robarts Library.What if Our World is Their Heaven is a collection of transcribed interviews with science-fiction mystic Philip K Dick.
These interviews are administered by a journalist named Gwen Lee
during the final months of the authors life, and it is very apparent
from their rapport that they have a close relationship with each-other.
Many of the interviews are, presumably, unedited in their
transcription, as they contain tangential musings on popular culture
(such as banter about the singer, Meatloaf) and even expressions of
self-doubt (from Lee, the interviewer) who occasionally discussed her
uncertain career shifts. These interviews are fairly casual, but
perhaps because Dick was speaking, on record, with a friend, he felt
comfortable discussing some of the more critical issues that he was
dealing with towards the end of his life. These interviews were recorded in the last four months of Dick’s life, during the production period of Blade Runner,
the first of several films based on the author’s work. Dick’s
impressions of the film-making process, his encounters with the starring
actors of the movie, and his excitement over the promotion materials
for the upcoming release make up a sizable component of these
transcriptions. More importantly, though, are Dick’s discussions of the
ideas he has for the manuscript he ultimately left unfinished, The Owl In Daylight, and his memories of his mystic encounters with the divine that occurred in February and March 1974.

These
interviews reveal why Philip K Dick continues to be a fascinating
personality. In his discussions of his working-class writer lifestyle
and his recent success in Hollywood, he appears through his speech as a
man crossing between plateaus, as he moves from everyday talking about
the things he watched on television and the stress of publishing
constraints, to talking about his encounters with god, and his
transposition of those experiences into The Owl in Daylight.
These are probably Dick’s most candid revelations of those experiences
beyond his private notes on the subject that have been published since
his death. While Dick had written shards of these experiences into several of his late novels, including A Scanner Darkly, Radio Free Albemuth, and VALIS, his concept for The Owl In Daylight
appeared almost prophetic, in that its protagonist was a composer whose
work improved dramatically through contact with some form of
extraterrestrial intelligence. This alien intelligence attaches itself
to the protagonist and kills him slowly, and the protagonist prefers to
die and produce profound works of art than to disengage. This almost
mirrors the last few years of Dick’s life, when his post-1974 writing
took a turn from its already philosophically profound idioms, towards
the avant-garde - not long before his death.

ContraTexts

This blog will operate under a broad understanding of the term 'counterculture' to include its various forms within the realms of art, society, religion, and politics.

My intention for ContraTexts is to become a large annotated bibliography for such materials. I am motivated by an academic interest in countercultural activity and I approach the texts I write about as research materials. I have no particular sympathies with the groups I study, nor do I claim any knowledge of them beyond what exists in their literature.

My primary focus is on books. I am also, however, interested in films, television, radio, podcasts, magazines, pamphlets, and journal articles on this subject matter.